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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24172186">Northward</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdleLeaves/pseuds/IdleLeaves'>IdleLeaves</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stand Still Stay Silent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drabble Sequence, Established Relationship, Everybody Lives, F/F, Rash Illness (Stand Still Stay Silent), Resurrection</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:13:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,800</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24172186</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdleLeaves/pseuds/IdleLeaves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse." - Margaret Atwood</p><p>Sigrun reclaims Tuuri from Tuonela. It doesn't go as planned.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tuuri Hotakainen/Sigrun Eide</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Northward</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/gifts">Elleth</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to Snom and Keeveet for cheerleading and beta!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sigrun stumbles back into the world of the living and falls to her knees. The Path recedes in a rush of wind and white wings, and she finds herself back where she'd started: surrounded by the reinforced walls of Keuruu.</p><p>Onni is beside her, cloak rippling and eyes still flashing silver-grey. Sigrun spares him barely a glance; all her attention is focused, instead, on the still-sleeping figure curled on the ground in front of her.</p><p>Tuuri.</p><p><i>Go, then</i>, the Swan had said. <i>Go, but know she is being returned to you as she was at the moment of her passing</i>.</p><p>* * *</p><p>The stages of grief are not linear, for some. Since their reunion, Onni and Lalli had seemed to be slowly working their way through, but Sigrun had skipped denial, gone straight to anger, and stayed there. In her rage, invading an unfamiliar afterlife with its strange gods had seemed a reasonable plan.</p><p>It had taken more time than Sigrun thought they had to spare, but she'd managed to shout Onni into compliance. He would lead her, he'd said - if only to prevent her from marring Tuuri's eternity, should they fail.</p><p>Sigrun had refused to consider failure. It wasn't an option.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Tuuri shifts, at last, in the grass. Her grey eyes blink open, half-lidded at first, and her brow furrows in confusion. She turns her head and looks up, toward Sigrun leaning over her, near-manic grin threatening to crack her face.</p><p>"Hey," Sigrun says, with a casual affection she has to fight to maintain.</p><p>"Am I..." Tuuri starts tentatively, then coughs.</p><p>"Yeah, Fuzzy," Sigrun says. "You are."</p><p>Tuuri's eyes brighten for a moment, but the smile abruptly fades. She sits up, too quickly, and lifts a trembling hand to her shoulder, fingers probing under her collar.</p><p>She begins, then, to cry.</p><p>* * *</p><p>"I'm sorry," Sigrun says, once she's screamed herself hoarse. Her transparent-walled quarantine cell is sparse, near-colourless; it had taken three orderlies to force her inside. She's bracketed by Tuuri on one side and Onni on the other, and neither will face her.</p><p>Tuuri's shoulders have long since stopped shaking, and now she sits, still as a stone, on the edge of her bed. There's something missing, Sigrun thinks. Some part of Tuuri left behind in Tuonela, sleeping still.</p><p>"If I'd've known," Sigrun tries again. "I just - I didn't think -"</p><p>"That's the problem," Tuuri says, unexpectedly bold. "Sometimes, you don't think."</p><p>* * *</p><p>Sigrun cannot keep still. The cells are half the size of hospital rooms, and glass-walled everywhere except the bathroom. There are white pajamas folded at the end of the bed. Sigrun shucks her clothes and pulls them on. There are slippers, too, but that's a step too far; Sigrun ignores them and paces back and forth in her socks.</p><p>Tuuri's pajamas are identical - even in length. She'd rolled up the hems to avoid tripping, but the sleeves are still hanging loose. Sitting cross-legged on her bed she looks like a child playing dress-up.</p><p>It's almost enough to make Sigrun smile.</p><p>* * *</p><p>There's little privacy, in quarantine. Sigrun averts her eyes, but will not resort to clapping her hands over her ears to drown out Tuuri's wordless, pained sounds as she's examined. Her temperature is taken and her blood drawn; a hazmat-suited doctor measures her rash and scrapes it for samples, tracing the edges with a marker to track its spread.</p><p>And it <i>will</i> spread. It'll take her over, an inch at a time, until the infection's in her blood. Until her heart slows then stops, and her chest falls but does not rise again.</p><p>Sigrun understands, now, what she has done.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Sigrun hardly sleeps that night - or the next. Her dreams are all the same - water, waves, and the cold ocean closing over her head. She wakes from each one with a strangled gasp, tangled in thin, rough sheets with her heart hammering and the taste of sea-salt in her mouth.</p><p>What she wants more than anything is to stand barefoot and shout until her gods - and Tuuri's - have no choice but to hear. Sound travels so easily from cell to cell, though, that all Sigrun does instead is clench her hands into fists and bite her lip until it splits.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Sigrun wakes mid-morning on the fourth day to her name on Tuuri's lips. Her eyes fly open to see Tuuri facing her, so close to the transparent cell wall that it fogs with her breath.</p><p>"I'm not mad at you," Tuuri says. "I mean, I was, but." She scratches at the dressings covering the worst of the Rash. "Promise me you'll stay," she pleads, eyes too bright, her still-unblemished hand pressed against the glass.</p><p>Sigrun crosses the room in two strides, matching her hand to Tuuri's and wanting nothing more than to shatter the wall into a thousand tiny pieces.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Tuuri is dozing again, on her side under layers of blankets - chills have set in, so the fever can't be far behind - when Sigrun rearranges her cell. She pushes her bed across the floor and alongside Tuuri's, leaving just the glass between them.</p><p>She lies stretched out on top of the sheets with her head propped up on one hand, and listens to the clock above the door tick away the seconds.</p><p>Tuuri stirs, soon enough, and wakes.</p><p>"Hi," Sigrun says.</p><p>"Hi," Tuuri replies; her smile is faint but honest, and the best thing Sigrun has seen since this began.</p><p>* * *</p><p>"What's it like?" Sigrun asks, after the overhead lights dim for the night. She's so close to the wall her knees rub against it. Tuuri, on the other side, is the same.</p><p>"You've been there," she answers, and continues to trace words and abstract designs on the transparent glass with her stiff, reddened fingers. "I don't," she starts, with a deep sigh. "I don't remember now. I think I did, at first, but it's gone."</p><p>Tuuri closes her eyes. "I don't want to die again," she says.</p><p>"I love you," Sigrun blurts out, as if that alone could save her.</p><p>* * * </p><p>Tuuri's temperature spikes overnight.</p><p>Sigrun struggles with her cell door; the lock will not give, no matter how hard she twists the handle. A security guard comes to stand just outside, and Sigrun punches the glass though she knows it won't break. Her knuckles will be bruised, in the morning. Sigrun doesn't care.</p><p>She returns to her bed as Tuuri shivers and mumbles, a hazy expression on her face.</p><p>"Who were you talking to?" Sigrun asks, when Tuuri calms.</p><p>"The Swan," whispers Tuuri.</p><p>Sigrun's heart sinks.</p><p>Onni, who has been so silent all this time, sniffles quietly until near sunrise.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Sigrun wakes from a light sleep to find a pair of orderlies entering her room. They take her down the hall to the too-hot decontamination showers; Sigrun emerges overheated and scrubbed raw, red hair damp at the back of her neck. She follows them back to the rows of cells, but not to her own door, this time: to the one beside it. She darts inside and the door closes and locks behind her.</p><p>Sigrun pulls the room's single chair up beside the bed, and reaches for Tuuri's hand. "You're stuck with me now," she says.</p><p>"Oh, good," rasps Tuuri.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Tuuri's fever continues to climb, and none of the available medications affect it at all. She alternately shivers and sweats, pulling the blankets up one minute and flinging them off the next.</p><p>Sigrun cares for her as best she can. She lays cold cloths across Tuuri's forehead and collarbones, changing them as they warm. She encourages Tuuri to sip water when she's lucid enough to hold the cup. She doesn't balk at numerous dressing changes, and she never hesitates before threading her hand through Tuuri's sweat-soaked hair.</p><p>She talks to Tuuri the whole time, so she knows she's not alone.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Tuuri spends more time asleep, now, than awake. Sigrun tries not to sleep at all - she fears what she may wake to, if she allows herself to rest. If the bed was a little wider Sigrun could share it with Tuuri, but as it is, all she can do instead is hold tight to Tuuri's gauze-wrapped hand.</p><p>Even the doctor has stopped asking Sigrun if she needs to take a break; when the door locks behind them again, Tuuri settles down against her thin pillows and closes her eyes.</p><p>"Sigrun?" she says, as she drifts off. "I love you, too."</p><p>* * *</p><p>Sigrun dreams of Tuuri. The memories are vivid; she can hear Tuuri's voice clear as day. <i>Sigrun</i>, Tuuri says, and holds out her hand.</p><p>"Sigrun?"</p><p>Her head snaps up. Tuuri is wide awake, affection in her tired grey eyes.</p><p>"Hi," Tuuri says.</p><p>"Hi," Sigrun replies.</p><p>The doctor appears at the door before either of them can speak again; Tuuri obediently takes her temperature and reads the results out loud.</p><p>Sigrun's heart seizes in her chest. No, she must have misheard. Tuuri holds out the thermometer, then, so she can see for herself.</p><p>It shouldn't be possible.</p><p>Tuuri's fever is breaking.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Hours later, Sigrun still fails to understand. The doctors cannot explain it, and neither can Tuuri.</p><p>"How?" Sigrun asks, again.</p><p>Tuuri shrugs. "Maybe the Swan didn't want the paperwork. Or maybe," she continues with a grin, "you caused too much trouble for her to want me back so soon." Tuuri's face falls. "Or maybe it's because I've already -"</p><p>"You said you spoke to her," interrupts Sigrun.</p><p>"The Swan?" Tuuri says. She scratches at her neck; the Rash has stopped spreading, and the edges are starting, already, to heal.</p><p>"Yeah," says Sigrun.</p><p>"Oh," says Tuuri. "I don't remember that," she claims.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Even as Tuuri continues to heal, Sigrun refuses to leave her side. The orderlies squeeze a second bed into the cell, just a few feet from Tuuri's; Sigrun promises to catch up on her rest.</p><p>She's out from under the covers, though, as soon as the lights dim for another night. "Shove over," she says. Tuuri moves to the edge of the bed, allowing Sigrun to fit behind her. It's cramped - Sigrun's back is firmly pressed against the cell wall - but it's hardly the first time they've shared a narrow mattress.</p><p>"Thank you," Tuuri says softly, "for coming for me."</p><p>* * * </p><p>A week and countless test procedures later, the doctor unlocks Tuuri's cell. Hand in hand, she and Sigrun, still damp from decontamination, step out into the fresh morning air.</p><p>Tuuri takes a deep breath; her smile could outshine the sun.</p><p>Onni is there, as well, and whatever Tuuri whispers to him has him laughing and crying at the same time. Sigrun gives them some time, then turns to Tuuri and kisses her like it's the first time, or the last.</p><p>Both of them know it's neither.</p><p>Above their heads, in the cloudless sky, a flock of white birds fly northward.</p>
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